Saturday, September 15, 2012

Sarada Devi - the mystery behind the mystic woman

But when he did not
come to fetch her even after she reached puberty, she went out to be with him

This despite the fact
that she had heard that he had gone mad

When on the first
night together, instead of erotic love being expressed, her husband prepared to
worship her as “jagat janani” or Devine Mother, she accepted his devotion
gracefully

Their marriage was bereft
of any romantic physical intimacy

They bore no children,
therefore

And when he died, she did
not throw away the symbol of a married Bengali woman. She continued to wear her
shakha,pola,bala

Not only that, she
took on another role, giving “diksha” or the mantra to the many followers of
her husband, most of whom were men

He left her nothing,
not even a pension and yet, she had no word of complaint when she went back to
her home in Joyrambati and had nothing to eat or wear, that could hide her
shame. The same torn sari, tied up wherever there was a tear, is all she had

Suffering did not tell
on her face, but broke the heart of many of her ‘sons’ who volunteered to look
after her till she died

Sarada Devi, or what she is better known as Ma Sarada Devi,
has been uplifted to the status of the spiritual mother by the religious order
which sprouted out of Bengal, The Ramakrishna Mission. Indeed, she was the
wedded wife of the temple priest, Sri Ramakrishna, at Dakshineswar, in the
mid-1800. Ever since his passing away, and over some time, the order of
sannyasins, started by no other than our own Swami Vivekananda, made a quick
move - they placed her on a pedestal which perhaps she well deserved for the
kind of person she was and appeared to be, in the eyes of the Order as well as
many others across the world.

This write is not to analyse the devotion she might have had towards her
husband. Rather, it attempts to look critically at Sarada Devi, from the three
states of being – the body, the mind and the spirit in order in the hope of coming
to some conclusions vis-a-vis her and these states of being.

Women’s bodies have been looked at for centuries as property belonging to the
parents or the husbands, sons of the woman. It has been taken for granted that
because, she may be physically weaker she needed protection. But really the
hidden story is different. Indeed, it is her sexual self, her child bearing
capacities, which have been clothed in the garb of protection, and taken
custody of, to ensure that she moves from the hands of her father, to the hands
of her husband and then to the hands of her sons, as if she were a commodity
wearing a chastity belt over her whole being, mostly her physical body.

Yet, that body is hers only - Its language, expression, desires, longings,
pains, the celebration are only hers to experience, because that body belongs
to her.

In the light of the above, can we say that Sarada Devi had none of these
factors that defined her body too? Had she no requirement to fulfil its needs
as all of us do? Or are we to say that she was beyond these temporal dimensions
that mark a ‘common’ woman? We can’t say that, because, she had shown some
mental indications which show us that albeit at a tender age of five, she did
choose whom she is going to marry, when he did not return to fetch her, she
went to meet her husband. She was grown up and like other women may also have
had the desires that are common to all of us, as also a sense of duty to be
with her husband. This serves as an indicator that she ‘knew’ there was more to
being a wife. And she was willing, or else why would she have gone, knowing or
having heard that he had gone mad? But, we are always wrapped in a haze of lack
of information on this quarter. Rather, the strategy used is what has been used
frequently on women, time and again, the plan, never to talk of those desires
and thus, perforce, push her to a status which is more comfortable for men to
associate her with, by forcing upon her a state of a demigoddess and add a
prefix, Ma, before the name, so she is also safely clothed in another over
rated ‘motherhood’ state. By doing this, the male bastion, and in connivance
with them, society and other women, who have got used to being looked at
through the eyes of one half of society, stamps out two things immediately –
(a) not acknowledging that she was human (b) discounting the body of a woman
with desires and a voice of its own.

This is the first conclusion. It has been the habit of men to discount the body
of a woman and thereby overrule any desires attached to it, by pushing it into
the domain of “motherhood” and idolising it to the extent that the woman may
herself forget that her body has any other desire, except that of motherhood.
Her duty now is to bring up the next generation of men and women, the latter to
again follow her example. In the absence of motherhood, she is either cast as
barren or made to wear the garb of a demigod in order that she may never be
looked at as a woman in the first place with desires.

The same connivance ails Sarada Devi too, although as we move ahead we will
realise that her own sense of being, was far higher than what she could be
comfortable boxed into - What shall we then say about her, when we see that she
is willing to accept her husbands’ engagement with her, as if she were a
goddess? Did she receive some kind of ego message from such an act? I think
not! For after the puja and the private ceremony was over, she had quickly
settled to a life of a wife, as they existed in poor homes of a temple priest
of those times in 1800, especially this one, who at one level the elite in
Bengal dismissed as a schizophrenic, and others adored as a spiritual and godly
man. Was it not hard on herself to live in a small room, with a mother in law
on the top floor, cooking all day long for a line of men or followers who came
to visit her husband? Was it not a difficult time for her to manage a life, so
close to her husband and yet so far away? Here again, what were her feelings,
is it possible to get all her happiness from the world, and be only in close
proximity of her beloved?

We are not aware of what went on in the mind except that she seemed to be a
perennial flow of good feeling and love for all. I question this, because, I
don’t hear her own voice but I read what others want to say of her. Has history
obliterated even a simple cudgel between husband and wife, or her
dissatisfaction with the hoards of young boys who came at all times and
expected that they would be fed by the ‘mother’? Was the kitchen fire her only
companion and if so, what were the conversations between them? Again, you feel
the desperation, an uneasy unrest at how to keep up an image, society can and will
delete all information that prove otherwise. In doing so, they wipe out an
entire human being, who is gendered female, and force a ghost of an image, they
can deal with.

In protest, I draw my second conclusion: (a) either history has wiped out
Sarada Devi’s feelings and her right to her own body and its expression in
whatever language or voice it so wanted to speak out in or, (b) she had the
enormous capacity to bear the circumstances of her life and that brings us to
the realisation that perhaps she was in a state of acceptance at all times
about the goings-on in her life, nevertheless.

The ability to bear and accept the circumstances of one’s life is beyond
psychology. As long as we are in the body or the mind, dissatisfaction dogs us
at every twist and turn, sometimes doing a fox trot, at other times, locked in
confusion and at still others deliberating the need to ‘trust’ existence, etc. Etc,
but once it moves beyond these two domains, all the argument dissolve in ‘just
Being’. This is a heightened state of being, whose path of arrival is through
the dense jungle of mind and body dynamics. It belongs to the domain of the
spirit, which ensures that one is already empowered within and therefore can generate
the skills required to bear and yet, go beyond the normal hubbub of life and
its happenings. ‘To be of the world, but not of it’, is often quoted at the
closest resemblance to that state of being. The person is so fortified; they
rise above it all and enjoy a state of autonomous existence, although, for the
rest of the individuals around, externally they see the person as the same. I
believe that Sarada Devi, was in this heightened state of being, already, even
before she chose her husband. Her trials and tribulations, her forbearance,
only play out once she is with her husband and thereafter, after he is no more
in his body.

Ma, the term used to describe a woman who has borne a progeny or one who is
forced into that box is too normal a state of being, indeed, too ordinary, for an
autonomous being.

We see the world and all around us, in exactly the capacity we have in your
vision of the world. Therefore, I question again as I arrive at the last
conclusion, has history been unjust to a woman, who far exceeded their vision
of her? Do we need to relook at Sarada Devi, in a different light? Is there no
need to enquire further on who she really was, beyond what we are told already?
Must we also join and silence the voices of a mind and body and submit with
mute devotion, the written word, without trying to re-write a history that has
been obliterated?

Granted the assumption then, Sarada Devi was indeed an autonomous
being, yet, this conclusion has not been arrived at by a thorough study of a
life, intricately hidden, in a mesh or words that push the bar up over her
existence and force her to be seated on a pedestal she probably never wanted to
be on. And if she were as I draw an empowered being herself, the footpath would
as clearly be as good as a golden pedestal.

Justice must be done and not denied any more.

This article expresses
my thoughts on the subject. On 12th September, 2012, I attended the Opening
Ceremony of Ma Sarada Kutir, in Vrindavan, India. The history of this place known
as Kala Kamli Kunj, marks the beginning of Sarada Devi, giving diksha or matra to
Jogen maharaj in 1886. Thereafter, she went on to initiate many others. The
present Kutir, has broken the taboo associated with the Ramakrishna Mission,
that being, the path of a spiritual life is only ordained to those who have taken
a vow to sannyas. In this Kutir, there are rooms available for ‘travellers on
the Path’ who can take a booking on single occupancy only basis, to spend time
alone, for spiritual practices of their own. This is a breakthrough because, it
now goes on to express that the Order has accepted, that the normal householder
can be a highly spiritual person, just like Sarada Devi herself. To make
further enquiries or to book for a stay, write to: rkmvrnd@gmail.com,